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Night combat friendly fire casualty caused by HMG


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For very long time I thought CMx2 will not have a friendly fire caused by small arms fire , and it will not have blue on blue fire incident during night combat (back in CMx1, this is a very big concern during night combat).

 

But, I noticed an incident.  CMFI , Polish campaign , mission 1, difficulty set at Iron. Phantom ridge north VP has been cleared in pervious two turn. I ordered all area fire ceased , the HMG gunner can pickup any target in their sight. 

 

Here is what happened 

Before:

zwE2mVu.png

 

After :

ZK9FlmV.png

 

HMG team kept firing at their comrade

GRksAoh.png

 

From HMG's perspective 

1KCyOhG.png

 

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2 hours ago, Chibot Mk IX said:

For very long time I thought CMx2 will not have a friendly fire 

In 2016 @Bulletpoint had a post about this.  I paraphrased it below. 

If the shooting unit does not spot the friendly unit, small-caliber area fire will kill friendlies. Try it out in a night battle, order your tank to machinegun some distant field and then send in some infantry. If the tank doesn't spot the infantry, the infantry will take casualties. Then order your tank to fire machineguns at friendly infantry that are very close in front of the tank. The tank can fire away all day without causing any casualties.  It also works with rifles.

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1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

If the shooting unit does not spot the friendly unit, small-caliber area fire will kill friendlies. Try it out in a night battle, order your tank to machinegun some distant field and then send in some infantry. If the tank doesn't spot the infantry, the infantry will take casualties. Then order your tank to fire machineguns at friendly infantry that are very close in front of the tank. The tank can fire away all day without causing any casualties.  It also works with rifles.

I ran a quick test and wasn't able to get this to trigger with small-arms.

IIRC friendly fire is based on weapon type and given that this is an HMG it might be able to cause friendly fire.

Edit:

Because the example is a tank firing its coaxial it probably counts as a different weapon-type for FF calculations.

Edited by Pelican Pal
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1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

In 2016 @Bulletpoint had a post about this.  I paraphrased it below. 

If the shooting unit does not spot the friendly unit, small-caliber area fire will kill friendlies. Try it out in a night battle, order your tank to machinegun some distant field and then send in some infantry. If the tank doesn't spot the infantry, the infantry will take casualties. Then order your tank to fire machineguns at friendly infantry that are very close in front of the tank. The tank can fire away all day without causing any casualties.  It also works with rifles.

Yes, this was what I discovered back then. But apparently BFC considered it a bug and "fixed" it. Later on I could not get it to work.

Haven't tried it in the newest version.

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I find I always take too many friendly casualties - it's often hard to not have inf in front of a gun or vehicle that is firing.  When shells hit trees etc. near the inf it's an xnt way to kill your own guys.  I vaguely recall that in CM1, if friendly inf was too close to where a gun was aiming, the gun would not fire at all.  I rather liked that as it simulated an intelligent gunner who would not fire if there was good change of damaging own men.  In CM2, the gunners just don't care.  (Probably millennials.)

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2 hours ago, Chibot Mk IX said:

But the Friendly Fire incident I posted is Not caused by Area Fire.  The TacAI intentionally direct HMG team (which is using .303 ammo) to shot at a friendly unit and caused one KIA.

My guess is that its because that its not a "small-arm". The gun is listed as an HMG so that may change how the FF system interacts with it. Also it could possible be a stray shot, shrapnel, a sniper, etc... that happened to get the kill just as your HMG was firing.

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I've witnessed several small arms friendly fire incidents in a night battle playing the Italian forces in CMFI just yesterday. It was the first mission of the "Fleeting Moment" campaign and there it happened several times that some troops opened fire with their rifles on their comrades. I guess this can happen if they are out of comms, which can happen quite easily with the Italians and their lack of radios. Just to be clear: No area fire commands where used when the friendly fire incidents happened. One of the incidents was at pretty close range even, when my company commander opened fire on one of his subordinates using his pistol!

After one of my troops got killed by one of his comrades I tried to reduce friendly fire by assigning fire arcs to all my troops, to prevent them to shoot in the direction of friendly forces.

It certainly makes night battles "more interesting".

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5 hours ago, QuiGon said:

've witnessed several small arms friendly fire incidents in a night battle playing the Italian forces in CMFI just yesterday.

My test was done in Black Sea (I used IRON difficulty mode to ensure they were out of contact + High EW) and I could not get small-arms to cause casualties. I'm on Steam version.

What verson of FI are you on?

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1 hour ago, Pelican Pal said:

My test was done in Black Sea (I used IRON difficulty mode to ensure they were out of contact + High EW) and I could not get small-arms to cause casualties. I'm on Steam version.

What verson of FI are you on?

v2.11 non-steam

It wasn't the first time I've seen friendly fire with small arms (and without area fire), but never before did I see it happen that often in a single battle.

Edited by QuiGon
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It's understood that when firing in proximity to friendlies, only 50 cal or above will cause casualties (although all friendly fire can cause friendly suppression).  In situations like low vis, if a friendly unit fires at another friendly unit, can casualties be caused by any caliber?

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Guys. Again, the casualty is NOT caused by Area Fire.    This is CMFI 2.11,  

Here is the save file of that turn's planning phase

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmzoi1mx7ueuob5/Monte Cassino 0201am 001.bts?dl=0

Please note that the 1st HMG section / 1/5/B do not have any area target command 

Here is the turn's replay 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/91s61e1w9s8oou4/Monte Cassino 0201am Friendly FIre at night 001.bts?dl=0

 

 

 

 

Here are some video clips

Part I, the first 30s of the turn , everything looks normal, HMG team fired one burst at Jerry at 20s, but aimed at friendly units at the end of clip

 

Part II,  HMG team fired two burst at friendly and caused one KIA

 

Part III, last five seconds of the turn. HMG team shot at friendly units again.

 

 

 

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@Chibot Mk IXit's the caliber of the round.

 

I frequently run into buildings being shot up for suppression and do not suffer casualties -- if I'm doing it with small arms. However, if you are shooting large caliber rounds then it can kill your own guys. .223, .30, etc. won't do it, but .50, I mean that's something that can punch holes in concrete. To prevent the above, give them a target arc so they're not opening up with your own friendlies in the firing lane. This is true of a lot of stuff. In one of my previous PBEM games I was the assaulting force in an urban enviro. Friendly fire was almost as big of an issue as contending with the enemy itself. But sometimes it's also just... acceptable to eat some friendly fire. (Don't tell the troopers that.)

 

I actually have an example just like yours to show. In this case I'm using irregulars to look for contact. They make said contact, but all the US forces standing by were basically free to fire. What ended up happening was the guys running to the building side got lit up by a humvee's .50 and I believe one got killed by a 25 or 30mm cannon round.

 

Base of fire POV:

https://streamable.com/5lgg4p

 

Irregulars POV:

https://streamable.com/6dnp34

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On 4/12/2021 at 10:10 PM, Erwin said:

can casualties be caused by any caliber?

YES!

I've seen this happening just a few days ago in CMFI as I described above. I saw 3-4 FF incidents in that battle, all of them small arms (rifles and even pistols) and all of them without area fire. Only one of those FF incidents resultet in a casuality though and this one was caused by a Carcano bolt action rifle (8mm).

Edited by QuiGon
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18 minutes ago, akd said:

I believe ricochets can cause casualties.

Yes, this has been my experience as well - for any caliber.   It's hard to prove sometimes as it can be hard to know where fire is coming from.  But, I well recall putting a lot of small arms fire from many units onto one wall/window that I wanted my engineers to blast thru, and they suffered several casualties from what seemed like ricochets.

Just yesterday in a game, I saw an enemy RCL fire at my inf. The shell hit the tree in front of them, and instead of exploding, ricocheted away and hit some other inf who were well out of any fire, and wounded/killed a couple.

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